Numbers 15:17 – 16:40
Notable verse 15:30 “‘But anyone who sins defiantly, whether native-born or alien, blasphemes the LORD, and that person must be cut off from his people.”
What strikes me about this verse is that I wouldn’t have lasted a day, at the most a week in the camp. I would have been stoned or exiled. It is frightening to think how much freedom we have now. I have given up watching movies and most TV because of this very issue. What would happen, if at least the church decided “Oh you swore this week…. You can’t come back for a month. Sorry.” Would my language be different? Would immediate consequence move faster than waiting for the fruit of the spirit to grow in changing my life?
Mark 15:1 – 47
Notable Verse 15:23 “Then they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it.”
Myrrh was a pain killer, it was offered as a kind gesture to a dying man. This moment is interesting for two reasons –
1. Jesus could have chosen to escape at least some of the pain He was experiencing and chose not to. It is a powerful realization that He experienced death, in all of its agony, on my behalf, without attempting to escape even a drop of it.
2. If you remember your Christmas story, you know that myrrh was one of the gifts given to Jesus by the Wise Men (side note, there is no mention of 3). It is almost as if the story has gone full circle. Life begins with myrrh and ends with it.
Psalm 54:1-7
Notable Verse – v.4 “Surely God is my help; the Lord is the one who sustains me.”
Nothing to say, it says it all.
Proverbs 11:5-6
Notable Verse 6b
“…but the unfaithful are trapped by their evil desires.”
There are few things more frightening than living with an addiction. Having personal experience with an addiction or two of my own and having lived through watching those I love deal with their own addictions; I can tell you there is only one word for living with it – trapped.
I am not going to write here about how to get out an addiction. I only want to simply say, this verse is true. Unfortunately, very very true.
